A CollationElementIterator object is returned by
the getCollationElementIterator() method of the
RuleBasedCollator object. The purpose of this class
is to allow a program to iterate (with the next()
method) through the characters of a string, returning
ordering values for each of the "collation keys" in the
string. Note that collation keys are not exactly the same
thing as characters. In the traditional Spanish collation
order, for example, the two-character sequence "ch" is
treated as a single collation key that comes alphabetically
between the letters "c" and "d."

The value returned by the next() method is the
collation order of the next collation key in the string.
This numeric value can be directly compared to the value
returned by next() for other
CollationElementIterator objects. The value
returned by next() can also be decomposed into
primary, secondary, and tertiary ordering values with the
static methods of this class.

This class is used by RuleBasedCollator to implement
its compare() method, and to create
CollationKey objects. Few applications ever
need to use it directly.

public final class CollationElementIterator extends Object {
// No Constructor
// Constants
public static final int NULLORDER;
// Class Methods
public static final int primaryOrder(int order);
public static final short secondaryOrder(int order);
public static final short tertiaryOrder(int order);
// Public Instance Methods
public int next();
public void reset();
}